The Importance of Gender Specific Group Therapy

Group Therapy In Addiction Treatment

Group therapy at Palmetto Addiction Recovery Center includes guided discussions led by our licensed counselors focusing on shared experiences to help treat addiction. Learning how to interact, share, and cope with one’s addiction in a group setting allows for patients to realize that they are not alone while helping to destigmatize their disease. Learning to support others in their struggle as well as finding one’s inner-voice boosts confidence as well as teaches how to relate to others and self in healthier ways. When asked about the importance of group therapy as it relates to recovery, Palmetto CEO, Hollye Rogers shares that “we find individuals who participate in group therapy have a higher success rate in recovery.”

Here at Palmetto Addiction Recovery Center, we have co-ed groups as well as gender-specific therapy. While individual sessions are pertinent to one’s recovery, group therapy creates a safety net for the patients which they can continue outside of treatment as well as grow by attending 12 step programs once at home.

Historically, men have a higher reported rate of addiction than women. However, young women and middle-aged women are closing the gap, primarily due to the fact, that women over the age of 30 are the largest demographic prescribed opioids. Though alcoholism and addiction do not discriminate, women are affected differently than men. Recent discoveries in science have proven that physiological differences accelerate the progression of addiction in women compared with men. Additionally, the female body processes alcohol differently and women addicts have a higher rate of receiving physical and mental abuse than men.

We have recently started a female only group in order to address the sensitive issues that sometimes women face in their addiction. As science has proven that women are affected differently by addiction than men, so too is their treatment in their path of recovery. Our female group therapy session targets co-occurring mental health issues that are more prevalent in women such as eating disorders, sex, love and relationship issues, trauma as well as personality disorders. Our female group session creates a safe place where women can connect with other women who share the same struggles. Aaron Jordan, Palmetto counselor, and women’s group therapy lead, goes on to say that “women who have participated in the all women’s group relate that they feel they are in a safe and secure environment free to explore the trauma they have experienced in their past and the relationship these events have with addiction. They experience a sense of belonging in the group and are able to connect on a deeper level because of this feeling of being safe and secure with women who better understand issues that arise as a female suffering from addiction.”